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Anita Desai's Fasting Feasting International Journal of Arts and Humanities: ISSN-2360-7998, Vol. 7(10): pp, 569-580, October, 2019. Copyright © 2019, Spring Journals Full Length Research Anita Desai’s Fasting Feasting: A Picturesque Reflection of Male-Chauvinistic Indian Society Mohammad M H Department of English, Jazan University, KSA, Saudi Arabia Author‘s E-mail: [email protected] Accepted 31st October, 2019. An attentive perusal of Anita Desai’s Fasting Feasting shows that the novel is really a picturesque reflection of predicament, plight, pains and pangs done one the females in male-chauvinistic society of the then India. In other words, the novel reveals her struggle for female autonomy against the backdrop of the patriarchal cultural pattern prevailing in India. She has picturesquely shown how the women are deprived of what they deserve. Desai has used the characters of Uma and Anamika to delineate how women are bereft of human rights –social, political, familial, cultural, economic, academic etc. and used for sexual gratification and then discarded. How women are persecuted in the family as well as in the society by the husbands and father or mother-in-laws, ignored to be educated, bound to go for miscarriage or hysterectomy, not allowed to enjoy various tastes of life have also been depicted in the novel. That the ‘new woman’ is essentially a woman of awareness and consciousness of her low position in the family and society is discerned here. This paper, besides showing how the Indian women are indescribably and brutally persecuted in the family and society,sidelined and not allowed to be educated, suffer from father obsession and look for the typical father in her husband, also aims at describing how Anita Desai has struggled for the independence of women of her time. Keywords: Autonomy, chauvinism, deprivation, education, feminism, hysterectomy, persecution etc. INTRODUCTION: The history of modern western feminism is comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that divided into three waves and each is described as rank she was created to fill.(Bheda 39) dealing with different aspects of the same feminist Alice Jardine, a professor of Romance issues. The first wave refers to the movement of the 19th Languages and Literatures and of Studies of Women, through early 20th centuries, which dealt mainly with Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University, offers a suffrage, working conditions and educational rights for definition of feminism. ‗Feminism, she writes, is women. The second wave (1960s-1980s) dealt with the generally, understood as a movement from the point of inequality of laws and the role of women in society. The view of, by and for women.‘(Jardine 15) third wave (late 1980s-early 2000s) is seen as both a Toril Mori defines ‗feminism‘ as a political continuation of the second wave and a response to the position, ‗femaleness‘ as a matter of biology and perceived failures. ‗feminity‘ as a set of culturally determined Throughout the twentieth century there has been characteristics. ‗The two words ‗feminist‘ and ‗feminism‘, a study of a ubiquitous male control over every aspect of says Toril Mori, are political labels supporting the aims of a woman‘s existence. Sarah Grimke observes: women‘s movements of the 1960s.‘(Mori 204) Man has subjugated woman to his will, used her Simply ‗feminism‘ means the adage which as a means of selfish gratification, to minister to his advocates for woman‘s complete equality with men in all sexual pleasure, to be instrumental in promoting his spheres of life—political, social, legal, economic, familial, 570. Int. J. Arts and Humanit. cultural, academic, etc.—and the feminist movement is aphorisms of a few of the great philosophers indicate the an organized effort for achieving such an equality and status of women in male-chauvinistic society. The old rights for women. ‗Charlotte Perkins Gilman was the first conventional notions of male-dominated society were so woman who stressed for the economic independence of rude, unbearable, suppressive, oppressive, depressive women.‘(Gilman 187) and unscrupulous that women‘s discourse takes a shape Similarly Simone de Beauvoir raised her voice of movement. Their consciousness seeks to analyze and against the sexual oppression of the patriarchal understand the material conditions through which gender society.‘(Gupta 7) has been constructed within specific languages and In our selected novel Fasting Feasting, the writer bodies of literature. And its result is that the strong wave has delineated how the Indian Women are deprived of of feminism in 1960s and 1970s took place for women‘s these fundamental rights in comparison with the men. liberation. Fasting Feasting gives a faithful expression to The above stated pictures about women have the ‗Long smothered wail of lacerated psyche and tells been drawn by the expert artist Anita Desai in her the harrowing tale of blunted human famous novel Fasting Feasting. The picture appears relationships.‘(Pathak 98) before the readers in every single line. Desai remarks: There are those who can handle The very beginning of the novel indicates how situations and those who can‘t. And my stories are the girls were treated differently in a family. Mama and generally about those who can‘t. They find themselves Papa treat Uma, their daughter, very differently than they trapped in situations on which they have no treat Arun, their son. They expect her to have no other control.‘(Bheda, Indian Women Novelists in English 14) needs, desires, or priorities other than meeting their needs. It's as if they see their daughter as an extension of themselves and their will, rather than as her own Women in the eyes of world-famous philosophers person. and literati: To quote Virginia Wolf, ‗Imaginatively she is Women were treated differently: completely insignificant, she pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history.‘(SenGupta 1) The novel opens in the modern day with Uma, The great philosophers who have immensely middle-aged and still unmarried, at home in India in the contributed to the existing values of life have summer, taking orders from Mama and Papa. They are paradoxically treated woman as an object to be used by instructing her with great importance about how they man: wish to have their afternoon tea. This leads to them She is God’s second mistake, said Nietzsche. To barking orders at her, very specifically, about how to do Aristotle she is an inferior man. He again says that the many different household chores at once. They female is female by virtue of certain lack of qualities. anxiously debate with each other about how best to Machiavelli chooses to identify woman with fortune: instruct Uma to prepare a box of care goods to send fortune is a woman, and if you wish to master her, you to Arun, who is attending University in America. They must strike and beat her. Schopenhauer says woman is worry that he has a warm enough sweater, and enough by nature meant to obey. The saying totamulier in utero tea. Uma grows very flustered trying to meet their (woman is nothing but womb) was in vogue. growing and changing demands. Her parents show no Shakespeare too refers it as, Frailty thy name is woman concern or even awareness for how their way of ordering and the same idea is mentioned in The Taming of the Uma around is making her feel. Shrew e.g., Thy husband is thy lord, thy keeper, thy Mama and Papa treat Uma, their daughter, head, thy sovereign. (Gupta, The Novels of Anita Desai very differently than they treat Arun, their son. They put A Feminist Pesrpective 6) a lot of thought into their package for Arun. Meanwhile, In Indian Vedic age Manu, the law giver of Hindu MamaPapa expect a lot from Uma, and their way of Dharma Shastra, clearly assigns woman a subordinate piling demands onto her shows that they give little position to man: thought to whether or not Uma can actually meet those During childhood, a female must depend upon her demands. father, during youth, upon her husband, her husband Uma struggles to remember a time when being dead, upon her sons; if she has no sons, upon the MamaPapa had 'separate existences'. She recalls near kinsmen of her husband; in default, upon those of that Mama and Papa have offered few memories of their her father, if she has no parental kinsmen, upon the childhoods before their young marriage. Mama's sovereign; a woman must never govern herself as she recollections focus on family and include remembering likes.(Gupta, The Novels of Anita Desai A Feminist little transgressions, such as the women of her house Perspective 6) sneaking sweets to their daughters and nieces, as Thus all the definitions about women‘s conduct, sweets were only allowed to boys in her household. behavior, and existence were given by men. These Papa's recollections focus on the struggles of his 571. Mohammad. boyhood in poverty and his hard work to overcome those ‗Uma, scrambling in after Mama, says, ‗Oof, Papa, why deprivations so that he could go to school and become a are we hurrying?‘ lawyer, such as studying under streetlamps late into the Once Papa gives the drivers orders all the way home. night. Then Uma again asks: Mama's recollections about sneaking the ‗Why are we hurrying? Uma asks again sweets betray the unequal treatment of girls and boys in querulously.‘(Desai, Fasting Feasting 13) her own family and the secret defiance of women Uma shows a hunger, not just for the literal nuts against that inequality. and gram she smells in the park, but for the sensations, Uma remembers the only example of smells, and sights presented to her in the park.
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